


Love Cometh Softly

by Alley_Skywalker



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Pining, Resolved Romantic Tension, clueless about own feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25031422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker
Summary: Of all the things Benvolio could have anticipated or imagined would happen when he came to live with Romeo in Verona, falling in love with Romeo's best friend since childhood was not one of them.
Relationships: Benvolio Montague & Romeo Montague, Mercutio & Romeo Montague, Mercutio/Benvolio Montague
Comments: 2
Kudos: 75





	Love Cometh Softly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amitye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/gifts).



> Happy birthday, sweetheart! I prooobably should have gone with a ship I can actually write like Dolokhov/Helene or something but alas.

Benvolio knows he’s lucky – there are much worse fates that could befall an orphaned boy of thirteen, even from a noble and wealthy family. To be taken in by his uncle to live with his family, who have always treated him kindly and lovingly, if from a distance, with his inheritance respectfully put into trust with a solicitor until he comes of age, is not a fate to be upset about. More so that he and Romeo will now live as brothers, a prospect they had fantasized about idly during the warm, summer nights Romeo had spent with Benvolio’s family. Neither of them had imagined it quite like this, though. 

Despite knowing all the things he has to be grateful for, Benvolio feels the pressure build up behind his eyes as he walks through the gates of the Montagues’ Verona estate, his manservant trotting behind him with his belongings. He goes embarrassingly stiff when his uncle embraces him in greeting and flushes when Lady Montague kisses his cheek. There’s a small dragon of guilt thrashing its tail against his ribs, telling him that he should smile and be cheerful and show that he is grateful. The high collar of his mourning clothes chafes against his neck in the heat of late spring at high noon. 

Benvolio turns at Romeo’s voice and tries to smile. It comes out fractured and strained. Another pang of guilt. Then Romeo’s arms are around him, warm and familiar, and something inside him snaps. He buries his face in Romeo’s shoulder and sniffles pathetically. This is home. 

*~*

The door to Benvolio’s rooms stands ajar, not visible without close inspection, but wide enough for him to pick up on the bits and pieces of the conversation of the two boys coming down the hall. 

Benvolio had heard plenty of wild stories about Romeo’s best friend Mercutio. So many, that he feels like he almost knows the boy without having ever met him, and he has no doubt that it is Mercutio whom Romeo is instructing in a hushed, serious tone as they approach Benvolio’s rooms. “Do be nice to him,” Romeo says, in almost a whisper. 

“Am I ever not?” the other boy says, almost gleefully, and a lot less quietly. 

“Must I answer that?”

“I will be on my best behavior.”

“A-ha.” Romeo does not sound convinced, as he knocks and pushes the door open without waiting for a response. 

Benvolio stands from where he had been curled up in an armchair with a book he was more staring at than reading. 

“Good morning,” Romeo says cheerfully. “Benvolio, this is my best friend, Mercutio. Mercutio – my cousin, Benvolio.”

“Nice to meet you,” Benvolio said, shifting his eyes from Romeo’s face to Mercutio’s with a feeling of dread. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Slowly, the dread begins to seep out of him, making his knees feel weak. Instead of the pity he had expected in Mercutio’s eyes, there is only curiosity and an amused spark of laugher.

“All bad things, I hope,” Mercutio says lightly. 

Benvolio looks at him a little taken aback. “Why would anyone want to be talked about badly behind their back?’

“Because the bad things are the only fun ones,” Mercutio explains with an air of exaggerated affectedness. He continues to inspect Benvolio with absolutely no shame. Feeling some contrarianism within himself, Benvolio stares back at him, allowing himself to take in Mercutio’s high cheekbones, dark eyes, and soft curls. He seems to swagger even when he is standing still – an amusing bravado for a boy who otherwise seems to be almost stuck to Romeo’s side. “You’re still in mourning,” Mercutio observes lightly. 

Romeo elbows him hard in the side. 

Mercutio whips around to look at him. “What? I thought the reason why this introduction to the mysterious Benvolio had to wait for so long was because he was in mourning.” 

Benvolio flushes at being called _mysterious._

Mercutio glances over at him and says with a shrug, “My parents are dead too. Don’t be offended.”

Benvolio turns an even darker shade of red. Romeo is glaring at Mercutio with his arms folded over his chest. “Can you be a normal person _for once in your fucking—?"_

“It’s alright,” Benvolio says suddenly, surprising even himself. His voice suddenly seems to exist outside of himself. He hears himself say, “I’m in mourning for propriety. I can still play.” His heart skips a beat nauseatingly. 

“Excellent!” Mercutio proclaims. “I have just the idea.”

“Oh no,” Romeo mumbles.

“Has Romeo told you about the Capulets?”

A small smile creeps onto Benvolio’s face. “Yes.”

Mercutio’s grin widens. “But has he told you about _Tybalt_?”

“Oh _no,_ ” Romeo says. 

Benvolio meets Mercutio’s eyes and the small smile flickering on his face widens. “Tell me.”

*~*

“Do you like him?” Romeo asks, his face tucked in the crevice between the pillow and Benvolio’s shoulder. Moonlight spills across his face and Benvolio can clearly make out the anxiety in his expression. It has been a week since he met Mercutio, and he has no doubt Mercutio is the subject of Romeo’s question. 

Benvolio takes a moment to think about it. Not because he _dislikes_ Mercutio or thinks he might, but because Mercutio is odd enough to arouse in Benvolio feelings he had never quite considered. He likes Mercutio is a way that is both similar and different to the way he likes Romeo, even though that is not quite the word either. He and Romeo are family, even more so now than before. Mercutio is—

 _Wild and funny and charming and irritating, and unfathomable, and—_  
  
“Yes,” he says, softly, and watches Romeo’s face relax endearingly. 

“I’ve been friends with him since we could walk,” Romeo says sleepily. “We’ve been together almost every day of our lives, except for the times in summer when I went to visit you. Sometimes I think I might no longer have a good sense of how…strange he is. Everyone feels him to be either too peculiar or too rude. I was afraid you would feel the same.”

“He _is_ peculiar, and he _is_ rude,” Benvolio says with a small laugh. 

Romeo looks up at him, sharply, alarmed. 

“But I like him.” Benvolio smirks and yanks the blanket over Romeo’s head. Romeo squeals and they tussle playfully for a minute. “We should sleep,” Benvolio says, letting Romeo out from under the blanket. 

“Do you want me to go back to my rooms?”

There is hardly need for Romeo to stay. In his first few days in Verona, Benvolio had found Romeo’s presence in his bed comforting – he was the only truly familiar thing Benvolio had had left. But now, nearly two months later, Benvolio figures he ought to manage to sleep alone. But Romeo does not look like he wants to leave, and Benvolio sees no harm in him staying, other than to his own pride and Lady Montague’s tutting if she were to discover them in the morning. “No,” Benvolio says. 

Romeo smiles, pleased, curls up even closer to Benvolio and drifts off to sleep within minutes. 

Benvolio lies awake and stares into the moonlight, wondering if Mercutio is right after all, and fireflies are the souls of virgins, condemned once to the fire, come upon the Earth again. 

*~*

The three of them are inseparable. 

Months rush together, flow from summer to autumn, to winter, to spring, and to summer again. The seasons cycle and fold into years. By the time he is sixteen, Benvolio feels as though Verona was always destined to be his home, Romeo his brother, and Mercutio his beloved friend. 

All the things that he had once found shocking about Mercutio are—still shocking, but sweet and familiar all at once. And when Romeo tells them, for the first time, that he is in love, Benvolio wonders how he can tell, for when Romeo describes the feeling, Benvolio is taken aback that he does not mean _friendship,_ for otherwise, Benvolio must have been in love every day for months, if not years now, which is patently ridiculous. 

Mercutio has no such qualms. He teases Romeo about his feelings, jumping up from their impromptu luncheon picnic in the Montague orchard to run circles around Romeo and Benvolio and make a number of jokes, which make Romeo flush a brighter red than fruit from the strawberry tree. Benvolio muses silently that while Mercutio is most ardently soliloquizing about the _love_ usually found with the ladies on the boulevard, Romeo certainly means something else. 

When he is finished and out of breath, and Romeo looks close to tears from embarrassment, Benvolio says, good-naturedly, carelessly, “Well, there’s a saucy lad.” 

Mercutio sits back down between them. “If you mean, sir,” he says, leaning back on his hands, “that I have a dirty mouth, then you have uncovered no secret. I have a dirty mouth, and a dirty mind, and many other parts indeed.” Mercutio’s eyes spark with haughty mischief and Benvolio feels himself flush almost as brightly as Romeo. 

“For once a truth,” Romeo says, apparently unperturbed by Mercutio’s innuendo now that it is aimed at someone else. “For I know well how oft as a child you designed to evade your nurse when she meant to bathe you.” 

“Silence, Montague! For I know far worse secrets about you.” 

Romeo sticks out his tongue at him. “Make me.”

They jump to their feet at the exact same moment and Mercutio charges at Romeo with a tribal screech. They make it three laps around the clearing before tumbling into the grass, the chase devolving into play-wrestling. Benvolio watches them, amused, a tender warmth spilling inside his chest. It frightens him to be so happy, but the pears are ripe, and the sun is warm against his skin, so he falls on his back and watches the clouds float by as Mercutio and Romeo trade joking, cheerful insults in the background. 

*~*

Benvolio does not resent Romeo anything. He does not believe himself capable of the feeling. Not with Romeo; not truly. Nor does he doubt his friendship with Mercutio, especially as it seems that the more captivated by girls Romeo becomes, the closer he and Mercutio are and the more time they spend together without Romeo. 

Yet, something still sucks at the pit of Benvolio’s stomach, sometimes, when Romeo and Mercutio exchange a glance that seems to equate to an entire conversation, or refer to occasions which Benvolio was not only not party to but of which he has never even _heard_. They are constantly touching each other and their mutual insults sound more like endearments. They never exclude him, and while Benvolio spends a non-null amount of time with Romeo without Mercutio and with Mercutio without Romeo, it is extremely rare these days for Romeo and Mercutio to be together _without_ Benvolio. 

Yet, every time they are, Benvolio’s imagination wanders. It settles of the way Romeo laughs when Mercutio jokes and the way Mercutio’s hands always linger whenever he rakes his fingers through Romeo’s hair. It traces the curve of Mercutio’s lips and the dip in his collarbones – wonders if Romeo’s stomach does the same flip at the sight. His common sense tells him he is being lewd. His imagination whispers traitorously that his cousin and his best friend share kisses in the tall grass by the river, among the fireflies, and that neither of them thinks of him in that moment. 

That Mercutio never thinks of him much at all. 

Benvolio falls to his knees and prays, but the feelings never go away. 

*~*

“You are staying here tonight; there is no way in heaven or hell I will allow you to walk alone, at _night_ , half-way across the city, in this state.” Romeo’s voice carries up through the still night air, waking Benvolio from the half-dozing state he had fallen into. He had not gone to the festival with Romeo and Mercutio that night, laid in by a nasty headache. Now they are returning, likely far more drunk than they ought to be. Benvolio slips out of bed and stands by the window, watching them approach the manor gate, Mercutio leaning heavily against Romeo’s shoulder. He takes care to stand far enough to not be seem by either of them if they were to look up at the house by chance. 

“How would your Lord Father like that?” Mercutio asks, not quite protesting. 

“Not well, but he has likely gone to bed.”

“We shall wake the servants, unless you have spare rooms prepared on the off-chance…” Mercutio is very drunk, Benvolio decides. Romeo, only mildly.

“You shall stay in my room.”

“In your bed?” Mercutio asks with a drunken giggle.

Romeo gives him a small shove and looks up at the sky dramatically, “Well, not in Benvolio’s that is for certain. Like letting a cat into the chicken coup.”

“Pity that.”

“Have I not told you…?” Romeo says, a note of warning slipping into his voice. 

“Why must you think the worst of me always?”

Romeo says something else, but by then they have rounded the corner of the house and Benvolio can longer make out their words. He lets out a breath he did not know he had been holding. _Pity that,_ he thinks, echoing and replaying Mercutio’s words in his head. 

He bites his lip until it bleeds and watches the fireflies swarm around a rosebush. 

*~*

Benvolio does not know how they ended up like this. One moment they were fencing, the next he is pressed against the side of and old toolshed, his heart beating wildly, and Mercutio practically pinning him against said wall with his entire weight, their swords forgotten at their feet. Mercutio’s face is incredibly close to his and Benvolio can see the fire of _something_ dangerous in his eyes. Mercutio’s right hand is pinning one of his writs, his other hand is lingering at his waist, not quite touching him. 

Benvolio swallows hard and chokes out, “You want to get off now?”

“Not particularly,” Mercutio says. Usually he would say it with a grin or a smirk. But there is nothing in his face now but a serious sort of concentration. His left hand finally comes to rest on Benvolio’s side and an explosion of shivers rolls over Benvolio’s neck and back. “Do you want me to?”

Benvolio stares into his face – familiar and charming and— _beautiful_. There’s a dragon of fear thrashing its tale against his ribs. He knows he ought not to. He knows— “No,” he whispers, looking down. 

Mercutio lets go of his wrist and gently lifts his chin so that Benvolio is forced to look into his eyes. The world tilts dizzyingly. Now—now the familiar smirk graces Mercutio’s lips and he practically lunges forward to capture Benvolio’s lips with his. 

It is an awkward kiss, rushed and triumphant, and Benvolio’s heart is beating so fast he thinks he might die of it. But he never wants to stop. 

“We have an hour before Romeo comes home and we are called to dinner,” Mercutio says a little hoarsely against his lips. 

Benvolio allows his hands to slide aimlessly over Mercutio’s arms and back. “We cannot…here.”

Mercutio pulls back just far enough to nod at the open shed door. Benvolio looks – and feels – dubious. Mercutio rolls his eyes. “Oh, come. Unless you want to waste time going _all_ the way back to your rooms.”

A dragon of guilt replaces the dragon of fear in Benvolio’s chest. “Romeo…” he mumbles, not quite certain how to put his concerns into words.

A vague uncertainty flickers in Mercutio’s eyes, but in a moment, it is gone. “He loves us too well to resent us this. Come. While our dear Romeo entertains himself with Magdalen—”

“Madeleine.”

“—We shall entertain each other.”

Benvolio groans and laughs, leaning his head against Mercutio’s. Only now he has realized how much and for how long he has wanted this. “Play not with me, Mercutio, “ he says. 

Mercutio cups his face and says, far more seriously than he can usually manage, “I would not risk two friendships for play.” 

Benvolio smiles, helplessly, and allows Mercutio to herd him into the shed, where no one would see their newfound brand of happiness.


End file.
